the worst – and best – of life with anxiety

Anxiety is my superpower

The dude said the titular phrase to me on the phone the other day, and it was like my brain lit up. Mind. Blown.

I spend a lot of time thinking that my anxiety sucks and it’s awful and I hate it and why am I like this and why can’t my brain work properly. And then I start thinking that it’s really frustrating for the dude and that he resents me for it(which he absolutely does not) and so do my friends(they also absolutely do not) and I need to get my shit together because otherwise I’m going to lose all of my shit and I’ll be alone and crazy forever.

So, when he said it’s like a superpower, I thought this:

But then we kept talking about it and I was like WAIT. All of the things that suck about my anxiety – the ruminating, the racing thoughts, the way I’m very easily over-stimulated – those are all things that make me awesome in another context. The ruminating thoughts turn into my ability to focus on one task, like grading 100 essays. Racing thoughts become my ability to pick things up quickly and move on. And being easily over-stimulated means that I’m more attuned to my surroundings than others, which on an evolutionary level is why I’m still alive. What up, Darwin.

So basically, I’m too much of a badass for my own brain to handle. I know that the next time I’m feeling really anxious it will be hard to think of it this way because I’ll be stuck in ugh this is horrible mode, but I’m going to try to pretend that Chris Traeger is in my head, saying this to me:

And honestly, if you could have anyone be the voice of your self-talk, wouldn’t you want it to be him?